In Nevada: The Land, the People, God, and Chance

"At once examining and experiencing Nevada, Thomson finds its people, its landscape, and the unexpected questions it inspires equally provocative. He shows us the historical Nevada - a classic Wild West, attracting Spanish missionaries, Mormons, uprooted Native Americans, explorers, and silver miners - and the contemporary influx of cultists, druggies, survivalists, and fortune hunters whose quests lead directly to the gaming table." "We see Nevada as a place of no-holds-barred experimentation, both social (gambling, prostitution, easy divorce, no taxes) and scientific (nuclear testing and storage of nuclear waste). We see suburbanites rubbing shoulders with sybarites; the natural beauty of Lake Tahoe, shadowed by the financial edifice of tourism; criminals, entertainers, and hotel impresarios sharing dreams of glory (and the memory of Bugsy Siegel and Frank Sinatra)." "In Nevada is a revelation of the gambler's mix of hope and anxiety, of the isolation and closeness, the beauty and banality, the fact and fancy, at the heart of the state - and the state of mind - of Nevada."--BOOK JACKET.Title Summary field provided by Blackwell North America, Inc. All Rights Reserved

From inside the book

IN NEVADA: The Land, the People, God, and Chance

User Review - Jane Doe - Kirkus

An idiosyncratic road trip into the American outback. Film critic and biographer Thomson (Rosebud: The Story of Orson Welles, 1996, etc.) ventures deep into the desert far beyond the Hollywood Hills ...Read full review

In Nevada: the land, the people, God, and chance

User Review - Not Available - Book Verdict

In some respects, Thomson captures the essence of Nevada in one of his closing statements when he writes, "Nevada is the north and the south; it is the greatest concentration of hotel rooms in the ...Read full review

About the author (1999)

David Thomson is the author of A Biographical Dictionary of Film (three editions), Beneath Mulholland: Thoughts on Hollywood and Its Ghosts, Showman: The Life of David O. Selznick, Rosebud: The Story of Orson Welles, and three works of fiction: Suspects, Silver Light, and Warren Beatty and Desert Eyes. His writing has appeared in Film Comment, Movieline, Vanity Fair, The New Republic, and Esquire. Thomson lives in San Francisco with his wife and their two sons.